Fruita Monument Boys Basketball enters new era under Ryan Engebretsen

GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. (KKCO) - Over the last handful of years, the Fruita Monument Wildcats boys basketball team hasn’t just been one of the best on the western slope, they’ve been amongst the best basketball teams in state.

But now things are going to look a little different.

After Wildcats Head Coach Michael Wells stepped down earlier in the year, it’s a new era and the program will now be put in the hands of Ryan Engebretsen.

“The job came up and I looked into it, took a couple phone calls and went through the whole process, the enduring process that it was and the AD took a chance on me and I hope to do great things for Fruita basketball,” Engebretsen said.

Prior to heading out to the Western Slope, Engebretsen was serving as an assistant coach for the Alaska Anchorage for six seasons. Before then, he spent 12 seasons at Wasilla High School, where he led the Warriors to six conference championships, three state-title game appearances, and the 2018 state title.

Fruita Monument Boys Hoops is coming off a 45-6 run in the last three seasons, including a stint as the number one ranked team in Colorado during the 2023-2024 season.

Engebretsen will look to keep the Cats in position as one of the top teams in the state. But how they go about it, that might look a little different.

“There’s obviously going to be a completely new program in a sense of how they’ve done things and how it’s operated before with Coach Wells, who did a fantastic job of finding ways to win games. He had his kid was a stud, was a very good basketball player,” Engebretsen said. “And my whole mantra of how I do things is going to be very depth oriented. We are going to have, we’re going to play through 8, 9, potentially 10 or more guys that are going to have the faith and confidence to just go hoop and play together and get things done from a defensive, on the defensive side of the ball first.”

This new era of Fruita hoops will look to not slow down the Western Slope powerhouse, but instead find a new gear.

“So it’s a whole new group as far as the experience goes and who they relied on. And I’m looking forward to it because there are some really nice pieces that are about to show up in a Fruita uniform that have been there in the system and are about to have their time to just show what they’re capable of,” Engebretsen said.